One developer’s underperforming social game is another developer’s treasure.

Social-publisher Zynga revealed today that is letting developer Big Viking Games take over operations on the social-city simulator YoVille. The transfer will port all of the game’s history and account details over to Big Viking’s servers by May 12. This transition will also see it drop its “Ville” branding, as that belongs to Zynga. Big Viking Games will now call the sim YoWorld.

“Thank you again for your continued support of YoVille over the last five years,” reads a Zynga letter to fans. “We are proud to have Big Viking Games, the original creators of YoVille, take the game over and help sustain the communities that many of you have nurtured over the years. We can’t wait to see what they do with the game and look forward to hearing about your new experiences playing YoWorld.”

YoVille debuted on Facebook in 2008 just as Zynga was moving into the heart of the gaming craze on the social network. In January, the company revealed plans to shut down YoVille, which was not one of its strongest performers. The publisher wanted to focus its resources on potentially more profitable projects.

In early March, Zynga revealed that it would halt landing the killing blow on YoVille while it discussed potentially selling it to the original development team. We’ve reached out to Zynga and Big Viking Games for details of their agreement. We’ve also asked Big Viking Games about its plans for YoWorld going forward. We’ll update this post with any new information.

We are very pleased to announce that Big Viking Games has successfully negotiated the acquisition of YoVille! On May 12th, the game will go offline for roughly 24 hours while all the necessary information is transferred to us. When it comes back online, it will be in our hands and will be known as YoWorld from then on.

In short: #Save_YoVille status: COMPLETE!

This turn of events is without precedent, and it never could have happened without your endless support and campaigning. We are blown away by your love and devotion for the game, and the fact that you never gave up hope. You have truly shown us what the community is made of, and we at Big Viking Games are both proud and honored to be lucky enough to work with you in ushering in a new era of the game.

This isn’t the first time that something like this has happened. Last week, Disney sold three of its Playdom social titles to startup developer RockYou. That situation is slightly different, however, as RockYou was not the original developer of any of the games it acquired.

As YoWorld comes online, Zynga is still in a transitional phase of its own. After making millions of dollars as the one-time top developer on Facebook, the studio has struggled as the audience has moved on from social to mobile platforms. Since 2012, it has lost more than 100 million of its monthly active users (MAUs), and it only recently released FarmVille (its highest-profile property) on iOS and Android last week. The company is hoping that mobile will help get it back on top.

Yesterday, former Zynga chief executive officer Mark Pincus stepped away from day-to-day operations at the company. After nearly a year under new CEO Don Mattrick, the company also started to show some life in its latest financial earnings report largely due to the performance of its mobile apps.

]]>0YoVille lives: Zynga agrees to let developer Big Viking Games take over operationsZynga spares its YoVille social game from the axhttp://venturebeat.com/2014/03/05/zynga-spares-its-yoville-social-game-from-the-budget-cutting-ax/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/03/05/zynga-spares-its-yoville-social-game-from-the-budget-cutting-ax/#commentsWed, 05 Mar 2014 17:00:59 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1051003Zynga is considering selling YoVille back to its original creator, Big Viking Games.
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Don’t let anyone ever tell you that a small group of people can’t make a difference. Just look at what fans of the social game YoVille have done.

Zynga confirmed today that it has reversed its decision to close down YoVille. The social game publisher revealed in January that it was ending the city simulator, which launched in 2008, to help cut costs while it shifts from Facebook to mobile. Long-time YoVille fans were unhappy with this decision and banded together to ask the company to keep it running. Those efforts paid off, and Zynga sent a message to its YoVille players today confirming that the game is safe for now:

Dear YoVille Players,

We want to thank you for your continued support of YoVille over the last five years. The outpouring of love you have showed for YoVille, and your dedication to the communities you have nurtured over the years in the game has inspired all of us at Zynga. As some of you might know, we’ve had ongoing discussions with Big Viking Games, the original creators of YoVille, about ways we can work together to help keep the YoVille community alive. We are continuing to have those conversations and explore the future of YoVille and, as a result, will not be shutting down the game as planned on March 31.

GamesBeat can confirm that Zynga is potentially looking to sell YoVille back to Big Viking, and the game will continue running while the two parties are in negotiations.

Zynga is still in a transitional phase. The company established itself as a top publisher of casual Facebook games over the last few years, but that market stagnated. As its players head elsewhere, the publisher has started shutting down some of its products to cut costs. That includes once-big hits like The Ville, CityVille 2, Empires & Allies, and around a dozen more.

Zynga announced it was cutting off YoVille in January, which was only a month after the company said it would not shut it down. That original assurance led some fans to purchase in-game products and VIP passes. When the January announcement came down, many felt like they were tricked. The “YoVillians” — as they call themselves — took to Facebook to protest the closure.

While YoVille may live, it’s clear that Zynga doesn’t want it. Under new chief executive Don Mattrick, the social game publisher is focusing on mobile going forward. That includes revamped versions of its popular titles for smart devices, Words with Friends and Zynga Poker, as well as a mobile version of FarmVille 2. These releases are in addition to the games from NaturalMotion, the studio that Zynga acquired in January.

]]>0Zynga spares its YoVille social game from the axDon Mattrick shows his poker hand for turning Zynga around in mobile (interview)http://venturebeat.com/2014/03/03/ceo-don-mattrick-shows-his-poker-hand-for-turning-around-zynga-in-mobile-interview/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/03/03/ceo-don-mattrick-shows-his-poker-hand-for-turning-around-zynga-in-mobile-interview/#commentsMon, 03 Mar 2014 16:00:42 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1012377The Zynga CEO is putting his stamp on the company, starting with three new mobile versions of flagship games.
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Seven months into his tenure as chief executive of Zynga, Don Mattrick is making some bold moves.

Today, he is announcing three major mobile titles based on Zynga flagship franchises Words With Friends, FarmVille, and Zynga Poker. A month ago, he agreed to pay $527 million for NaturalMotion, the publisher of hot mobile titles like CSR Racing and Clumsy Ninja. Many executives have left the company in recent months and Mattrick is replacing them with his own picks, like chief operating officer Clive Downie.

The turnaround is a tough one, as Zynga missed big opportunities bridging the gap from social games to mobile. It turned a profit last year — but a small one. It has shed hundreds of employees, including many seasoned developers. The company is shutting its YoVille game even though it still has loyal fans. And it still isn’t anywhere near its goal of dominating the mobile charts the way it once reigned on Facebook.

But Mattrick believes that the hits will come as Zynga doubles down on five major game brands and takes more creative risks. In an interview, he reminded us that more than a billion people have played Zynga games in the past six years, including 400 million that have played FarmVille. Here’s an edited transcript of our interview. (Also see our analysis of Zynga and previews of Zynga Poker, Words With Friends, and FarmVille 2: Country Escape).

GamesBeat: From your perspective, it feels like you guys are being gutsy with some of your game-design changes.

Above: Don Mattrick, CEO of Zynga.

Image Credit: Zynga

Don Mattrick: The first thing we’re trying to do is accomplishing more progress in the passage of time. We’ve doubled down on important things that our company should be doing to support our aspirations for the business that we want to become.

We’re trying to make sure the company becomes a content leader in free to play. We’ve been building stronger teams. We’re paying more attention to consumer research. We’re spending time thinking about how our experiences are differentiated relative to the competition. We’re trying to be thoughtful about the opportunity, which is, “Hey, we should be creating experiences in categories that we know consumers love.”

As you know, in entertainment, the top 20 in any category account for more than 50 percent of the profit pools that are available. We’re fortifying, committing, and building capabilities to create hits that show up in the top 20.

We’ve created an opportunity for a company like Supercell with Hay Day by not bringing FarmVille to mobile, building an iOS and an Android version that works online and offline, building an economic model where you can have trading between the Web and mobile versions, innovating on the game design, making it performant on those mobile devices. That’s what the team’s been doing now. I’m pretty excited about it. The testing has been well-received. What did you think of it?

GamesBeat: FarmVille 2 definitely translates a lot of those improvements over to mobile. With Zynga Poker and Words With Friends, it almost seems like you guys want to disrupt yourselves before someone comes to disrupt you, especially on mobile.

Mattrick: Here’s what we’ve gotta do. We’ve gotta overdeliver value to consumers, in any product category where we are. That’s the job. As time passes, our teams get more capable. They learn more from having an audience. We get an opportunity to give two things: things that are proven, that people love, and things that are innovative, that add to the surprise and delight of the experience. Those are the things the teams are executing on. They’re doing it in a thoughtful way.

Above: The new Zynga Poker.

Image Credit: Zynga

The good news is, from an investment standpoint, those results are showing up in our financial measures. We expect that 2014 will be a year of growth for the company. I’m pretty excited about that.

GamesBeat: One of your guys said he was excited about the creative confidence that the company now has. You’re willing to take some risks, like changing up a poker game that’s working really well.

Mattrick: From being in the entertainment space for a long time, we should be aspiring to create. We should be aspiring to be great. The more time you get to participate, the more time you get to perfect your craft. We’re adding more art, more intuition, more consumer research, and at the same time, we’re building on some of the science of running great app-scale live services. We’re blending those things together.

GamesBeat: It seems challenging to try to do that when you have a lot of executive turnover and employee downsizing as well.

Mattrick: A big part of that I’m actually pushing on and leading. I audited the management team when I joined. I asked them, “What do you do? How are you making people better? What do you want to create over the next three years?” The people who didn’t have a great answer to that question, they aren’t here anymore.

The people who are here are energized. They think it’s a privilege to create. We’ve been dealing with core issues of our business, getting our resources and capabilities allocated first on content, second on running a great set of experiences, building tools and technology, and then having our support functions be driven by world-class individuals more than large groups of people. We’ve increased accountability. We’ve made things more discrete.

I love some of the new people that we’ve brought in, like Clive Downie. He’s been doing this for 20-plus years. I had a chance to work with him at EA. He was driving Ngmoco and DeNA for the last six years in the mobile space. There are multiple examples of new people who’ve come in. They’re excited about the industry space. They have a provocative point of view. They’ve created billion-dollar successes before in multiple franchises. People are now starting to frame up what’s possible.

You probably read the King filing. Pretty amazing results. If anything, it demonstrates the accelerated growth in our category, the size of the profit pool, and the size of the opportunity that’s there. We’ve been under-indexing. We’re now closing some of that gap. We have hard work to do, but we’re making material progress each quarter.

Above: Torsten Reil, CEO of Natural Motion, shows off Clumsy Ninja.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

GamesBeat: It seems like you’re always one game away from a blockbuster. How do you feel about taking more shots on goal?

Mattrick: I’m super excited. Zynga, in its first five years, accomplished things that most companies don’t get to — a billion dollars in revenue, a billion dollars in operating income, and touched a billion consumers in the first five years. Now, when you look at it, the company in its peak year generated $393 million in earnings. At some point in the future, I’d like us to get to that level and beyond.

We’re going to do that in two ways. We’re going to nurture proven hits, things like FarmVille, Poker, social casino, Words With Friends. And we’re going to create new ones. We’ve added what I think is the best independent creative group on the planet with NaturalMotion. Have you spent time with Torsten Reil and Barclay Deeming [of NaturalMotion]?

GamesBeat: Torsten mostly, yeah.

Mattrick: He’s the real deal. Oxford graduate, spent time studying how motion occurs, broke it down into a physics problem, a neural-learning problem, and an animation problem. He wrote tools that showed up in Lord of the Rings. He started translating that to the PC and console space. He wrote the tech pipeline that powers Grand Theft Auto, that showed up in GTA IV and V and Red Dead Redemption.

Then he started shipping mobile products. With the few at-bats that those teams have had, they’ve been able to ship things that have charted number one. They have kept all of that tools and tech expertise for exclusive use in the mobile space. That gives us a point of differentiation, an ability to create things that are important and valuable to consumers. We now have five categories — cars, people, farming, poker/casino, and Words With Friends.

Zynga pioneered social gaming on Facebook, and it has been trying for a couple of years to replicate that magic on mobile. That path has been much more difficult than anyone thought. Yesterday, it announced it would accelerate that effort by paying $527 million to acquire Natural Motion, maker of CSR Racing and Clumsy Ninja.

Zynga also said that it was beginning to turn around financially, but it also made another round of layoffs, cutting 314 employees, or 15 percent of its total. That shows the company isn’t out of the woods yet.

Clive Downie, the chief operating officer at Zynga, has been on the job for three months, reporting to new CEO Don Mattrick. Together, they’ve created a new gameplan for getting Zynga’s mojo back, and they revealed it for the first time yesterday. We got a chance to ask Downie detailed questions about that comeback plan in an interview after the announcement. Here’s an edited transcript.

GamesBeat: How are you enjoying your first few months on the job?

Above: Clive Downie left DeNA West to become COO at Zynga.

Image Credit: Zynga

Clive Downie: I’m loving it, although we had to make some hard decisions today in one area.

GamesBeat: Do the layoffs signal that Zynga may shut down other games? Or are you thinking of that as more like an across-the-board cutback, where a small percentage of each team might be cut?

Downie: The goal of this was to execute better and create meaningful leverage and efficiencies. I believe it’s the right envelope to run more than 30 live game services and create new against our growth aspirations and against our content strategy that I outlined in the call. The decisions we made today give us the right space to build on through 2014. We don’t want to be in a constant state of transition.

GamesBeat: You have shut down some older games. How do you decide that? A given game may not be high among the priorities at the moment. But I’m curious why you can’t just keep running it. Maybe it still has a million players. It seems like you could make money just running an old game, but you guys appear to have decided that’s not a good idea?

Downie: Right now, we run more than 30 live games that are delighting many millions of consumers every day. Some of them are well over a year old, or multiple years. We aren’t in the business of closing our products. We made a very specific decision recently with regard to YoVille. We always take a customer-centric view of our games. We value the long-term sustainability of our game communities, and we always strive to keep them active as long as possible within our game-lifecycle framework.

We do have a game-lifecycle framework. It’s not a snap decision. When this can’t happen any longer, we do look for other options. In the case of YoVille, there was a dialogue with the game’s creators about a partnership that would see the game continue to be grown and sustained by them, so that’s exciting. We’re in those discussions and we hope we can conclude them sometime soon and move on.

Our framework is about making sure that for as long as possible, our teams of people internally making games are sustaining those live game services and making them better, until such a point as we think, “For this good of our consumers, we should be having those game creators work on something else. They should work on making new things.” It’s always that balance between sustaining something and getting to something new.

Above: Clumsy Ninja goes through the hoops.

Image Credit: NaturalMotion

GamesBeat: The Euphoria game engine is one of these big jewels at NaturalMotion. Would you go so far as to say that the decision to buy them was dependent on Euphoria? Will Zynga teams use Euphoria, or might that be something NaturalMotion itself would be best assigned to do.

Downie: I’m sure you’ve played CSR and Clumsy Ninja. Clumsy Ninja is a wonderful product with its best months and years ahead of it. Our decision to bring NaturalMotion into the family is because they make great games. They make great games because they have two things going for them that they’ve grown over a decade. They have excellent creative instincts and talent, and they have an excellent technology platform and tool set in Euphoria to realize that creativity.

It wasn’t just for Euphoria that we brought them into the family. Euphoria is a driving force that empowers that creativity. The end result is why we brought them into the family. They make great games, which makes it exciting to be able to work with them.

To your second question, will we look for ways to utilize Euphoria within the core of Zynga? Absolutely.

GamesBeat: The distinction between hardcore games and casual games, is it still one that you make, or do you consider the combination of these two companies to simply create one focus on making great games?

Downie: The combination is focused on making number one products in the categories that we’ve identified and will continue to identify going forward. I don’t necessarily want to put a classification on the products we plan to make as far as casual or hardcore. I’ll ask you specifically. Do you think CSR is a hardcore game? It doesn’t feel like a hardcore game to me.

GamesBeat: It almost seems to fit that midcore definition pretty well.

Downie: Yeah. The great thing is, you can play it in two minutes and legitimately feel you got something worth that time investment. It’s superaccessible. Anyone can pick it up and play it and enjoy. And then with Clumsy Ninja — I’m sure you’ve played that — it’s just a wonderful simulation of a person in your pocket that you can tune into and have fun with and smile with.

GamesBeat: This isn’t necessarily a strategic shift in that sense, then? It’s not like Zynga is going into hardcore gaming.

Downie: [Chuckles] The answer is no, because I don’t particularly believe those products are hardcore. They’re very accessible to many consumers around the world who want to participate in the categories and the themes that they use in the product.

GamesBeat: The priority market going forward seems to be mobile. These guys have demonstrated definite success in mobile. Is there a conclusion to make about this, that mobile investment is your priority?

Downie: We have an emphasis on growing our mobile consumer base by making No. 1 products in those categories where mobile consumers are and where we believe we can make a difference and break through social to those categories. But we make games where the consumers are in those categories, based on our expertise.

We have a strong Facebook and web business. Our poker product is strong there. Words with Friends is strong there. FarmVille is strong there. We’ll continue to innovate and grow and sustain those businesses. We have a new product launch coming on Facebook imminently with CastleVille Legends, which was mobile first. We make games where our consumers are, and we’ll continue to do that.

Zynga told its players a couple of days ago that it would shut down one of its oldest games, YoVille, by the end of March. The title has been around since 2008. YoVille is a casual game for people to play in a town-like community. It grew to a point where millions of people were playing it, and it spawned a whole series of “Ville” games, light-hearted simulations like FarmVille.

But Zynga’s troubles have caught up with it. The company has had a hard time transitioning from Facebook games to mobile releases on iOS and Android, which has resulted in a rapid decline of its audiences on the aforementioned social network. The developer has cut its work force dramatically and shuttered a number of other games. YoVille apparently was immune from that, until now.

Some “YoVillians” are taking it hard and have started a grassroots campaign with more than 5,000 signatures to save YoVille. They’re threatening to boycott Zynga altogether if it doesn’t save the game.

“We, the undersigned, vow to stop playing ALL Zynga games if YoVille is shut down. Sell the game to another company if you have no interest in maintaining it, but do not just pull the plug. If you do, you will lose us completely as customers.”

We’ve asked Zynga for comment. Zynga told players in December 2012 that it was not shutting down YoVille. The players said they paid for VIP memberships on the basis of such promises. Tall Tree Games (now Big Viking Games) developed the game.

When individuals log in to YoVille now, they’ll see a notice from Zynga about the difficult decision to shut down the game. The San Francisco firm is offering to give them gifts of virtual goods, like a bag of fertilizer, that they can use in other Zynga games: FarmVille 2, Zynga Poker, and Hit It Rich! Casino Slots.

If Zynga is planning to close down the game, as it has told players in its forums, then it appears the company’s efforts to turn itself around are still facing challenges. Don Mattrick, former head of Microsoft’s games business, joined Zynga as CEO last summer, with founder Mark Pincus moving to chief product officer. Mattrick has followed through on cost-cutting plans, but he didn’t immediately cut titles like YoVille. But it looks like the old game has finally fallen.

In a statement, the company said, “Zynga recently made the tough decision to sunset YoVille so we can put more time and energy into developing new games for our players. Over the years YoVille developed a truly passionate community, and we thank our players for their dedication to the game. We look forward to delivering new and exciting social games that we hope our players will love playing with their friends and family as much as they loved YoVille.”

Mattrick has said in two past earnings calls that he is in the process of reassessing and resetting the company’s product pipeline and that Zynga is working on new projects.

]]>0Updated: Zynga to finally shut down one of its oldest games, YoVilleTop game controversies of 2012http://venturebeat.com/2012/12/31/top-game-controversies-of-2012/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/12/31/top-game-controversies-of-2012/#commentsMon, 31 Dec 2012 18:00:03 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=595187From game violence to sex chat, game companies got into hot water in 2012.
]]>Gaming execs:Join 180 select leaders from King, Glu, Rovio, Unity, Facebook, and more to plan your path to global domination in 2015. GamesBeat Summit is invite-only -- apply here. Ticket prices increase on March 6 Pacific!

The video game business never has a year without controversy. 2012 was no different in that respect. But the different ways that game companies could get into trouble and draw mass market attention were surprising. The age-old controversies about sex, violence, and other cultural insensitivities surfaced again this year. But game publishers also had to deal with the consequences of being hacked, violating the government’s concerns about military security, and upsetting fans by failing to live up to games-as-a-service obligations in free-to-play games.

Sometimes, the controversies brew up from the bottom as unintended consequences. At other times, it seems like the controversies are intentionally manufactured for marketing reasons, so that the game can rise above the noise and catch the public’s attention. But that’s a double-edged sword, as such marketing can turn off as many consumers as you attract. Whether the controversies are accidental or intentional, it’s clear that when you create entertainment for the public, there are so many ways to get into trouble. Please vote in our poll for the top game controversy, and leave a comment if you like.

Video games take the heat for Newtown shooting

The horrific shootings at Newtown left 20 children and seven adults dead. Though it happened late in the year, this incident revived concerns over excessive violence in video games. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that video games were protected under the First Amendment. But calls for regulation and studying of a possible link between games and violence went out again in the wake of the shooting. The anti-game-violence crowd got help from an unexpected corner, as the National Rifle Association blamed the shooting on violent video games (and called for armed guards at schools). Greg Fischbach, former chief executive of Mortal Kombat publisher Acclaim Entertainment, predicted that the consequences of the shooting will play out over years for the game industry.

Ex-Navy SEALS disciplined for consulting on Medal of Honor Warfighter

Electronic Arts touted the fact that former elite soldiers gave it advice in the design of its realistic combat shooter Medal of Honor Warfighter. But the company failed to go through the proper channels in getting permission from the government for the consulting. As a result, the Department of Defense punished seven active-duty Navy SEALs who consulted on the game. The SEALs had two months of pay docked and received letters of reprimand. More were under investigation.

Among those who consulted was Matt Bissonnette, who was part of Seal Team 6 team that killed Osama Bin Laden. EA said that it wasn’t aware of any rules that required EA to vet the game with the DoD. It wasn’t clear if any military secrets were improperly divulged in the game. Bissonnette also got into hot water for co-writing the nonfiction account of the raid that killed Bin Laden in the book, No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden.

Copycatting called out

Zynga has long been accused of copying other game designs. Electronic Arts finally sued the company this year for allegedly copying The Sims Social with the launch of Zynga’s The Ville people simulation game. EA claimed that Zynga’s team copied many details of The Sims Social. Zynga denied outright copying, and it noted that EA’s SimCity Social was similarly a copy of Zynga’s own city-building game, CityVille, and that CityVille itself has only passing resemblance to EA’s SimCity games on the PC.

In response to similar allegations of copying in a bingo game, Mark Pincus, chief executive of Zynga, claimed that his company has re-imagined past games by making them more social. The result is those games become more popular than ever thanks to sharing with friends on Facebook. EA said that it had to stand up for the industry to stop the rampant copying. Complicating the matter was the fact that The Ville’s designer, Mark Skaggs of Zynga, used to work at EA, as did many other Zynga executives. The issue of copying came up again as Spry Fox sued 6waves for copying not the look of its game, but the game play. That lawsuit was settled. But the EA-Zynga dispute is still pending.

The courts have been clear on the subject. Making a new game in an existing genre isn’t a violation of copyright law. But taking someone’s computer code and claiming it as your own is illegal.

Talent raiding wars

Related to the copycat allegations, big companies also went to war over talent raids. After Zynga hired an EA executive, Zynga alleged that EA’s chief executive John Riccitiello proposed an anti-competitive no-hiring pact or he would threaten litigation. Zynga claimed that was the real reason for EA’s copycat lawsuit. Meanwhile, Kixeye CEO Will Harbin made a hilarious video lampooning Zynga and EA as part of a campaign to recruit talent. But then Zynga sued Kixeye for stealing a game designer. Zynga alleged that Alan Patmore took 763 confidential documents with him when he started his new job at Kixeye. But Harbin blasted Zynga for lashing out while it was “burning to the ground and bleeding top talent.”

Apple cracks down on bot marketers

Early in the year, Apple quietly prohibited mobile game companies from using bots and other marketing tactics that artificially boosted games in Apple’s rankings of its top-performing apps. Animoca alleged that Apple unfairly cracked down on its Pretty Pet Salon game and that communication from Apple was sparse. Our own investigation found that the secrecy around the crackdown left a lot of developers wondering what was OK to do and what wasn’t when it came to marketing games. Game developers feared that if everyone used unfair marketing tactics, then legitimate high-quality apps might never get noticed. But one thing was clear. If you used too many incentives, Apple would start paying attention. Late in the year, Tapjoy again learned a tough lesson about being too aggressive with incentives, this time with web-based offers that apps linked to from within Apple apps. Neither Apple nor Tapjoy elucidated on the matter, leaving developers in the dark.

Hackers disrupt online games

Anonymous taught Sony a big lesson last year as it hacked into both the PlayStation Network and disabled the network for 77 million registered users who could no longer access their online games. It also attacked Sony Online Entertainment. This year, hackers were back with more attacks. Gamigo got hacked and lost control over 8 million email addresses and passwords for its users. And 11,000 Guild Wars 2 players also had their passwords stolen. Zynga’s YoVille social game saw disruption for 1,000 fans after some players began using a vulnerability to steal belongings from other accounts. Game companies that get hit by hackers will find out that consumers will blame the company for lax security as much as they will blame the hackers.

Fan revolts hit Mystery Manor

Game Insight had a tough time dealing with fan outcry after it decided to take away some perks offered to players of the game. Game Insight made the iOS version of Mystery Manor: Hidden Adventure, which was enjoyed by as many as 20 million registered users. The hidden object game was a free-to-pay title where users could play for free and pay real money for virtual goods. But Apple banned a practice that the game had previously allowed: letting friends obtain and trade gifts with other players inside the game. Game Insight had to scramble to comply with the rules and fans objected. A second fan revolt erupted with a second service disruption. Fair warning. Fan revolts are going to be common if game developers decide to change long-standing online games or discontinue them altogether.

Sex chat brings down Habbo virtual world

A British TV station dealt Habbo a severe blow when it blew the lid off a sex chat culture within parts of the virtual world, which has more than 250 million registered users. During the scandal, retailers stopped carrying prepaid cards for Habbo and an investor pulled its support from the company. Habbo had measures in place to stop sexual predators, but it shut down the service to deal with the new allegations. The company reviewed its chat records and found 3.7 percent of members were engaged in inappropriate chat. By the time that Habbo went back online with new measures in place, it had lost about 35 percent of its membership. Chief executive Paul LaFontaine pledged to redouble efforts to protect kids and win more of those users back.

Ex-OMGPOP ignites debate about refusing to work for Zynga

OMGPOP’s Pictionary-style mobile game Draw Something gained a huge number of users early this year, prompting Zynga to buy the New York game company for $180 million. But Shay Pierce, one of OMGPOP’s employees, wrote a blog post about how he didn’t want to work for Zynga, which he viewed as completely antithetical to his professional and creative values. Then OMGPOP CEO Dan Porter tweeted that the one employee who didn’t accept a job with Zynga (Pierce) was the “weakest” one. But Pierce didn’t miss out on much. Draw Something lost millions of users and Zynga had to take a write-off of $95 million because of the diminished value of the mobile game. Zynga’s stock price also cratered as it announced two quarters of weak earnings in a row.

EA and Activision Blizzard spar over Infinity Ward

In 2011, Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts squared off over the departures of the founders of Infinity Ward, an Activision-owned studio that built the Call of Duty franchise into a billion-dollar machine. Two co-founders were fired from Infinity Ward as they prepared to exit and set up Respawn Entertainment, a new game studio funded by EA. The lawsuit was headed for a trial this year. Just before the trial, EA and Activision settled the case. But not before there were some interesting disclosures about Project Icebreaker. Activision executive email records showed that executives were hunting for dirt on the co-founders as a pretext to fire them. Activision denied the characterization of the emails.

Mass Effect 3’s ending fiasco

Fans were in an uproar after they played through the entire Mass Effect trilogy, only to be disappointed by the uninspired ending of Mass Effect 3. The fan reaction was so intense that Electronic Arts’ BioWare division decided to come out with an enhanced ending to satisfy gamers. And not long after that, BioWare founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk decided to retire from their top positions at EA.

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]]>0Top game controversies of 2012Hackers disrupt the gameplay of Zynga’s YoVille social gamehttp://venturebeat.com/2012/05/07/hackers-disrupt-the-gameplay-of-zyngas-yoville-social-game/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/07/hackers-disrupt-the-gameplay-of-zyngas-yoville-social-game/#commentsTue, 08 May 2012 00:46:11 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=427336Gaming execs: Join 180 select leaders from King, Glu, Rovio, Unity, Facebook, and more to plan your path to global domination in 2015. GamesBeat Summit is invite-only -- apply here. Ticket prices increase on March 6 Pacific! Hackers broke into one of Zynga’s older social games, YoVille, and they were able to disrupt the gameplay for a group of fewer than 1,000 […]
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Hackers broke into one of Zynga’s older social games, YoVille, and they were able to disrupt the gameplay for a group of fewer than 1,000 players. The social-game company acknowledged the security problem but said it had addressed it.

While the damage is contained, the idea of a security flaw in a Zynga game is scary, since all of them are digital, and protecting them is essential to the company’s livelihood. Nils Puhlmann, chief security officer at Zynga, said in an interview that sensitive information about players was not compromised.

“Credit card numbers are not an issue here,” said Puhlmann. “It is more a case of YoVille players disrupting other YoVille players.”

The incidents occurred over the course of a couple of weeks during the course of April, and Zynga essentially had the problem solved after that, Puhlmann said. In the incidents, some players were able to break into the in-game accounts of other players and deplete their inventory of belongings in the game in a matter of 30 minutes or so, according to one of the players affected.

“We detected unusual activity in YoVille, and it coincided with reports from a small number of users,” Puhlmann said. “We analyzed the reports. We found that a small number of vulnerabilities that contributed to the unusual activity. The game team patched these vulnerabilities immediately.”

Zynga had to go through a couple of rounds of iteration before it was able to close off the exploits that players used to attack other players. This naturally caused a lot of consternation inside the game, where players complained about the attacks in forums and felt like Zynga wasn’t doing anything. For a time, players were angry because Zynga had not solved the problem. A group that allegedly took credit for the hacks went by the name The Best YoVille Hackers.

“[Zynga] support often doesn’t help them and give them their stolen items back,” said one player who contacted VentureBeat. “This is a major problem in the gaming world.”

Puhlmann said the infrastructure that was vulnerable and exploited was separate from the security systems that protect more sensitive information such as player identity or credit card information. Puhlmann said the company has investigated the thefts of digital goods and restored them to everybody who lost something at this point. At least that is the case where losses have been verified, Zynga said.

Puhlmann said the malicious activity was limited to YoVille and did not extended to other games. During the process of patching, the game was not taken down. During the course of the investigation, some players were banned, Puhlmann said.

In a statement, Steve Lurie, general manager for YoVille, said, “First and foremost, we want to thank our YoVille players and ensure they have the best experience possible. Since we first identified abnormal activity a few weeks ago, securing YoVille and restoring the games of the affected players have been our top priorities. We quickly searched for and identified the vulnerabilities we believe attackers used to harass our players and patched them immediately. Fortunately, no sensitive player information was at risk, and our assessments indicate that fewer than 1,000 YoVille players were impacted. We will remain vigilant in our ongoing security efforts.”

]]>1Hackers disrupt the gameplay of Zynga’s YoVille social gameFrom castles to card games: a rundown of Zynga’s biggest titleshttp://venturebeat.com/2011/12/12/from-castles-to-card-games-a-rundown-of-zyngas-biggest-titles/
http://venturebeat.com/2011/12/12/from-castles-to-card-games-a-rundown-of-zyngas-biggest-titles/#commentsMon, 12 Dec 2011 17:30:32 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=357350Gaming execs: Join 180 select leaders from King, Glu, Rovio, Unity, Facebook, and more to plan your path to global domination in 2015. GamesBeat Summit is invite-only -- apply here. Ticket prices increase on March 6 Pacific! Zynga is the most recognizable name in social gaming. Facebook members and iPhone owners alike have seen Zynga’s games continuously rise and fall from the […]
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Zynga is the most recognizable name in social gaming. Facebook members and iPhone owners alike have seen Zynga’s games continuously rise and fall from the top of the charts over the past few years, and with CastleVille’s launch earlier this month, it is unlikely that will change any time soon. The company is likely to go public soon and raise a ton of money, so we thought we would show this primer on Zynga’s social games so everyone can see what the fuss is all about. These simple, time-consuming titles have taken the world by storm, bringing in hundreds of millions of users internationally since Zynga’s beginning in 2007.

CastleVille

Let’s begin with the most recent, and fastest growing, Zynga game – CastleVille, released on November 14, 2011. CastleVille follows closely in the footsteps of the other graphical ‘Ville games, focusing on maintaining a kingdom while fighting off monsters called Beasties and exploring the overwhelming Gloom that has swept over the land. The only way to advance into the Gloom is by increasing your Castle Level, which requires actions such as building protective walls. As your character levels up, more buildings, tools and perks become available.

Given its medieval oeuvre, CastleVille feels a little more like an RPG than previous outings, which might draw in some of the social game detractors and those who have tired of the repetitive formula of Zynga’s recent games. CastleVille aims to be yet another resounding success for the prolific company, and as we have reported previously, this title has surpassed CityVille as the fastest growing launch for a Zynga game yet. As of Dec. 12, CastleVille has 30 million monthly active users on Facebook, according to AppData.

Mafia Wars 2

If any of the Zynga Facebook games warranted a sequel, it had to be Mafia Wars. Mafia Wars 2 launched on October 10th, and this follow-up to one of the most infamous of Zynga’s arsenal of games completely overhauls the text- and menu-based original to keep it in line with the current generation of graphics and combat-fueled ‘Ville games. Of course, the sentiment is the same: make money, expand your turf, earn street cred and don’t get shot (too much). The Bone Yard is a nice addition for those feeling the need to take out their aggression on tiny avatars of other players.

The recent Zynga games (like many of the older Zynga games) have a specific formula to them, which might be why a game about gangsters feels strikingly similar to a game about medieval kingdoms and another game about a burgeoning empire on a group of islands. Regardless, Mafia Wars 2 is still bringing in over 11.3 million users a month, hanging in there as one of Zynga’s 10 most played games on Facebook.

Empires & Allies

Empires & Allies is one of the first of the genre-specific Facebook games by Zynga, and was released on June 1 of this year. It follows in the footsteps of CityVille and FarmVille in terms of resource management, but the story and combat are reminiscent of real-time strategy games. Players must lead an army against the villainous Raven to regain the glory of their nation. You are initially given a small island in which to militarize and begin your siege on the enemy, but expansion is encouraged as more islands open up. It’s the first real Zynga game where combat is the core game mechanic. But the cartoon style is meant to appeal to more than hardcore gamers.

This military-centric ‘Ville also offers a relatively robust player vs. player option for those looking to show off their impressive armies. You can choose to invade other players’ islands in order to take over some of their production and gain extra cash. Empires & Allies maintains 18.2 million members, all of whom can’t help but continue the battle.

CityVille

Happy birthday to Zynga’s CityVille. Released on Dec. 2, 2010, the title is Zynga’s most popular game, consistently bringing in the most users of any Facebook game. In CityVille, players start off with a small plot of land to populate with houses and farms, growing in level and collecting rent until they can expand their land and their city alike. As you can tell from the screen above, investment in CityVille certainly pays off visually, with sweeping skyscrapers and crowded streets covering the terrain.

This socialized SimCity might not have quite as many gameplay elements as Empires & Allies or CastleVille, but the scope of progression and the grandeur of the cities has clearly grasped millions of players and refuses to let go. Even a full year after its release, CityVille receives over 49.7 million players every month. In other words, this is the biggest Facebook game of all time, and that title won’t be wrested from CityVille’s hands easily.

The Pioneer Trail (FrontierVille)

Another ‘Ville in the vein of FarmVille, FrontierVille, released on June 9, 2010, plops players in the midst of the Old West, tasked with fending for themselves among the wilderness. If you weren’t paying close enough attention, you might have mistaken this for FarmVille with a slightly anachronistic paint job, and you wouldn’t be too far off. Players farm, plant crops, raise animals, and basically complete FarmVille tasks in a new setting.

Lo and behold, over a year after its launch, Zynga decided to revamp FrontierVille with a new plot, new gameplay elements, and even a new name. The Pioneer Trail was born. This time, although the core FarmVille mechanics remain for those who prefer the Wild West to a modern farm, there is a fully fleshed out adventure players can embark on with three friends (NPCs or other players). This mode breaks the mold of Zynga’s other social games, with cutscenes, non-player characters, and even an ending, but it doesn’t stray too far from its roots in terms of actual gameplay. The Pioneer Trail is still inhabited by over 5.6 million monthly users.

Words With Friends

Possibly usurping the Wars and the ‘Villes as the most recognizable Zynga property, Words With Friends was not actually designed by the company. Newtoy, Inc. was bought by Zynga after the release of both Chess With Friends and Words With Friends, released in July 2009. But Words fits rather well here in the middle of rundown considering Zynga’s very first title, Zynga Poker. Zynga’s acquisition of the With Friends series complements their original poker title perfectly, even more so now that Zynga Casino is on the way.

Words With Friends is basically online Scrabble with fantastic Facebook integration and simple asynchronous gameplay. Players can start a game with a random opponent or with a friend, either by username or Facebook handle. The game can be played at whatever pace the players choose, and multiple games can be played at once. The game still brings in over 12.3 million users a month. Earlier this year, Zynga With Friends (formerly Newtoy, Inc.) released their third title Hanging With Friends, another iOS success.

FarmVille

If FarmVille succeeded in anything (other than making gobs of cash), it helped break down the wall between gamers and non-gamers. Nearly everyone with a Facebook account planted some corn and raised a few chickens since FarmVille’s release on June 19, 2009, regardless of gender or age. Plus, the basic farming mechanics of FarmVille have appeared in several of the more recent Zynga games, further proving the basic formula’s longevity. FarmVille was Zynga’s first break0ut hit.

FarmVille might be the most simplistic of the ‘Villes. Players own a small farm in which they must plant crops, raise animals…and that’s pretty much it. As players complete these tasks, their level increases and more animals and crops become available to purchase. If you have any neighbors, you can visit their farms and help fertilize their crops and harvest the milk from their cows. Incredibly, FarmVille still rakes in a crowd of over 30 million farmers a month, right behind its graphically superior successor, CityVille. FarmVille recently passed up The Sims Social to become the second-largest game on Facebook again.

YoVille

The father of the ‘Villes, YoVille, launched in May 2008, took a page from The Sims’ book and gave us a home to decorate and reside in, along with a static town to explore. This is yet another of Zynga’s purchases, one that later spurred them to continue the top-down, avatar creation, social games such as FarmVille and CityVille. YoVille is much simpler than Zynga’s successive games, mainly focusing on being social with other players’ avatars rather than reaching certain goals.

With all the new properties Zynga has introduced over the past few years, YoVille shows its age. The graphics and lack of any real gameplay might turn off new players, but the game still brings in over 2 million users a month, quite an impressive feat for a game as old as this.

Mafia Wars

Mafia Wars is the social game that started it all. No Facebook user has managed to escape at least one or two requests to join the Mafia since this game’s launch in early 2008. Mafia Wars, unlike most of Zynga’s more recent titles, including Mafia Wars 2, is a browser based game as opposed to a graphics based one. Players have a limited amount of rechargeable health, stamina, and energy with which to complete tasks and fight other players. Fighting stats are another factor determining which player is more likely to win in a fight.

Throughout its lifetime, Mafia Wars has increased in size by adding cities, which serve as expansion packs of sorts. Some of these cities have remained a permanent part of the game, but others, such as Moscow and Bangkok, were only around for a limited time. The original Mafia Wars, despite the introduction of its sequel, still has over 3.2 million users a month.

Zynga Poker

Of course, before Zynga invaded our social networks and mobile phones with farms, mafias, cities and castles, there was Zynga Poker, launched in July 2007. To this day, it remains one of the most played Zynga apps, with almost 29.6 million users every month. This is one of the most popular online poker games of all time. It functions like most other Texas Hold ‘Em games, but as with most of Zynga’s titles, players have the ability to level up. Leaderboards allow friends to compete for better rankings and everyone has the option to send gifts to their friends as well.

The game is available in a multitude of languages across nearly every platform imaginable, and it was recently announced that Zynga Poker would become part of a bigger Zynga franchise: Zynga Casino. All we know for now is that Zynga Poker and Zynga Bingo will be included in this package.

Conclusion

Zynga is a dominating force in today’s social gaming market. Despite the controversy and the shrinking profits, no one can deny the effect Zynga has had on gamers and (previously) non-gamers alike. These might be 10 of the most recognizable Zynga titles, but here are some of the others which still garner millions and millions of fans every month, including Zynga’s latest mobile titles: